I could not get into Dawn of War 2 and 3 despite pouring thousands of hours into DoW1 and it’s expansions. Why do makers of classic RTS games (looking at you EA) have to f*** with the formula?
Was the same for me too. I remember getting DoW2 and being so disappointed. Then 3 came along… I’ve given up them making a decent game again.
Even that DoW remaster isn’t looking good. I’m holding out until I see the reviews but if they’re only going with AI upscaled textures for £30 then no thanks.
I think there are broadly speaking three main categories of let’s players: hypemen, analysts, and tryhards.
Hypemen focus on being boisterous, high energy, and fast paced. They focus on entertainment value above all else, even above the game itself.
Analysts take things a bit slower. They aren’t trying to be the best at the game, but instead like to play a variety of things and talk about their experience playing or insights related to the game.
Tryhards are usually either pro gamers or very close to it. They usually play a smaller number of competitive games trying to be very skilled at them. The enjoyment of these streamers comes more from seeing someone excel, and potentially learning from them if you play the same game.
My point with this is all of these routes are proven ways to engage an audience, so having interesting things to say isn’t a necessity.
That being said, this is an entertainment medium we’re talking about. If you aren’t entertaining in some form then I don’t think you’ll find much success. It’s a learnable skill, so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t come without practice
Only possible thing I could maybe add or tweak would be… expand ‘hypemen’ a bit more to include… well, at least an attempt at some kind of comedy.
Maybe split this off into its own group?
A lot of earlier gaming youtubers… at least seemed to be trying to more or less do live playthroughs or after playthrough reviews that… basically just tried to either ad lib, or write a script with as many relevant jokes a possible.
I keep emphasizing ‘tried to’ and ‘attempted’ because many of these schticks just… sucked, lol, or quickly fell apart into a depressing cynicism spiral.
Granted, you seem to be focusing mostly on live streamers, specifically lets players, as opposed to the older, sort of gen 1 of youtube video game content people, where a lot of it was just… i dunno man, i just recorded myself playing a game, shrug.
…
Also, at this point, there may be at least two other distinct kinds of… video content about playing games, types of people, excluding esports amd speedrunners, but nvm anyway:
…
Roleplayers.
There are a lot of streamers that just pick some roleplayable game or roleplay mod or whatever of a game, and I think that’s … kinda its whole own thing, where a lot of the content/style is … i dunno, you could call it maybe a real time soap opera generator, a number of these people will actually learn or construct a whole fleshed out voice and personality for their character… but also a lot of roleplayers will more or less just basically be asshole trolls/bullies.
…
‘I am bad at games but cute’
Many vtubers, pickmes, also not pickmes but actually interested in games, but also very unfamiliar with them.
This is a whole other style or genre, where the appeal comes from… well, theoretically it could include other extremely naive / inexperienced noobie video gamers, but realistically, its mostly the appeal of viewers parasocially having a mostly submissive but also earnest psuedo girlfriend.
Probably worth noting that this can be a consistent schtick, or can… often evolve into ‘hype(wo)man’ or ‘tryhard’.
This is imo distinct from just being cute and also being any other kind of streamer… because the ditzy cute naiveity is strongly emphasized, often to a ludicrous degree, as well as the lack of skill and amount of unforced errors… and this is the whole point, to evoke sympathy.
…
Also, now that I think of it, this could maybe qualify as distinct:
Meme/Joke/Ludicrous self imposed goals or restrictions video game player.
The whole concept of this is to basically attempt to do something completely absurd in a game, to play the game ‘wrong’ in a way that is at least in broad concept, humorous on its face by how ridiculous it is.
Like uh i dunno… play through RDR2 but you have to never use a horse, ever, or play through Morrowind without ever increasing any of your stats, naked playthroughs of Dark Souls, aim for some nonsense/meme strategy in Hoi4, play competetive Madden or Fifa where your entire team is 4’ 6" and weighs 600lbs, kill yourself as fast as possible in a game that is designes for that to not be able to happen, win a racing game going entirely in reverse the whole time…
Just wacky zany shit.
Usually this translates better to a youtube format thats cut down from a livestream, but those livestreams can get decent numbers as well, and you can also tie in your viewers to the whole thing, maybe they get to decide some new absurd task or make some decision for you at some point.
Thanks! I think you’re right that there could definitely be more granularity to what I said. I was trying to go as broad as I could, which of course leaves out a lot of detail. Good thoughts about other possible categories. I don’t disagree with any of it.
I actually haven’t ever seen the roleplayer category you’re talking about, but I’m intrigued. Is there anyone you’d recommend?
If I had to give a name to the joke streamers you mentioned, I’d probably go with challenge streamers. I think that definitely falls outside of the categories I said, but I also see a lot of streamers that do fall into the three I made up dabbling with that kind of content here and there, so there’s probably some crossover too.
Hey, I took your framework and ran with it, collaborative effort =D
But uh sadly no, perhaps ironically, either I’ve aged out of really enjoying livestreams, or the… content and or platforms have basically just become quite generally off putting to me, I haven’t really watched any livestreams or livestreamers in a few years now, beyond basically a bi-annual check in, followed by a sigh, lol.
So I don’t really know any current roleplay type streamers I could suggest… but it theoretically wouldn’t be too hard to find one?
Basically, you’d wanna look for some kind of … serious, adult only roleplay community for some game, and then see if any of them stream.
Ideally, just uh, instantly nope out of any RP community that has its own MTX scheme of any kind, those basically all devolve into bickering and cliques and internal power struggles … in the actual community, outsidd of the roleplay.
Also ‘challenge streamers’ yes, good, this is much more succinct than my ramblings, haha!
And yeah, you’re right that… these aren’t all perfectly exclusionary boxes, they can mix and match a bit, blend somewhat… but they are all perhaps good basic conceptual starting points for some kind of… grand unified theory of videogame oriented content or something.
EDIT:
Fuck, I just finally actually read your username.
Thats clever, I like that =P
Ok, bed time for me, I’m nodding off, uh, woof, lol.
I mean that children (squeekers) are not allowed in these RP comms/streams, because they very often tend to be extremely immature and petty, and very often just… ‘RP’ as a self insert, powertripping bully/troll/outright fascist, do shitty shit like stream sniping to intentionally ruin other people’s RP.
But uh, that’s my personal preference away from such content.
Such content is… imo, depressingly… often quite popular.
I am trying to more emphasize that there are some examples of what I would say is more quality, diamonds in the rough.
I never got super info their videos, but I think the DreamSMP would count as the roleplayer category. Honestly, when I think about my childhood Minecraft YT channels, Aphmau was the main creator of RPG-like “tell’s a story though Minecraft” content (MC Diaries, MyStreet, Dreams of Estorra [RIP 😭], etc ).
Anyway yeah, there’s a subcategory of people who I think like to roleplay in their games and make a creative, original story out of it. I think another modern example would be the Your Average Hylian, a channel that makes silly content focusing around LoZ, like “What Hyrulean ads would be like” or “Hyrule Cooking Show Parody”
I am not super familiar with the actual content and nature of these streams, but if your descriptions are generally accurate, then yeah, these all sound like good examples:
You throw yourself into a gameworld by genuinely treating it as reality, more than as a game, like TTRPGs where the RP is more than ‘murder hobo’ or ‘i am an extremely obvious joke/gimmick/reference character’.
I remember randomly stumbling upon, at one point, a Japanese youtuber who did / is doing a playthrough of Kenshi, and then goes back and sort of invents dialogue between her party of characters, to try to build an interesting storyline and do character development, out of what is basically a reactive sandbox… they’d voice the characters with an AI gen, or perhaps more old school voice generator, have the dialogue in english and japanese subtitles, kind of uh… ren py story based game or like fire emblem style cut scenes, interspersed between clips of gameplay footage, sometimes superimposed on top of it.
Now, this was very niche and isn’t really representative of what is popular or hugely succesful, but it is an example of another way that you can approach some kind of video game rp content to… more or less try to make something like an anime out of it.
This is the way! Also you pick up the physical copies used from places like Vintage Stock. Don’t even have to pay full price. Best time to buy digital is during a Steam sell.
The pattern on the left is actually just inside the case, under a clear part of the case. That part is black in the Euro version, but the case looks the same otherwise. (We have cases like that, too.)
Edit: Also, that Japanese one? I’m pretty sure it’s the same style, but turned upside down. That’s the base of the case. Searching Google, I found a copy on Ebay that shows the front, and that section of the front of the case is clear for that one, too.
I love Might & Magic VI - VIII but IX killed the franchise for me. Wrong vibe, terrible bugs. I tried X when it came out, but it is also a different game.
You can also do it like Dunkey does. Just record gameplay first, edit it to make an interesting or funny video and then later add the commentary and act like it’s given live during the moment. It’s easier to do if you aren’t used to giving off the cuff commentary during a live let’s play video. And you don’t have to be a live streamer to be a gaming YouTuber.
Maybe just focus on creating short videos first so you learn how to edit, give commentary and create little stories (yes even Let’s Play videos need to have some sort of “story” and theme). Remember the first dozens of videos will suck. Don’t focus on viewership or subs focus on honing the craft first. You also need to figure out your unique selling point, the thing people watch your videos for instead of the millions of other gameplay videos, and you will only figure that out if you start making videos.
Ah yes, the “it’s been 3000 years” guy, genuinely one of the series best moments.
What else was there? The villain? Whack. The champ? Whack. The prof? Whack. The 5 rivals? Whack. I don’t think 2 great scenes make a good story, no matter how elaborate the lore.
Thank you for your input, but I won’t leave my mountain to fight you on your hill.
The premise was really great. The “Pokemon is just dogfighting for kids” argument is a long-standing argument, and I was so stoked that they took it on.
And then they just bait-and-switched it to “The team doesn’t actually want to stop dogfighting, they just want to be the only ones with dogs to fight everyone else”. It was the laziest cop-out possible.
Killmonger syndrome. The “villain” has a point, but rather than engage with it, they’ve gotta bomb a school or something.
I recently caught Shaymin in Arceus and it made me uncomfortable. The quest is helping a woman find a Pokémon that helped her in the past, and then immediately after I threw poke balls at it. It escaped every time, so eventually I had to force it into a fight, beat it until it was too weak to escape me. I had just done a quest which acknowledged that some ‘mons don’t like fighting too…
This could have been a great “difficult choice” moment. But Pokemon games don’t do these. If you want to 100% the game, you gotta catch em all. I haven’t played Arceus, but I’m quite sure the game never acknowledges whether you caught the Shaymin or not. And with no stakes on the line, there is no “difficult choice” moment.
Grain of salt, as i havent played the mystery dungeon games or Colosseum, but Platinum had a great amount of story, and a decent amount of post-game content that wasn’t just min-maxing to win.
Everything post-B2/W2 is just too hand-holdy to me.
Don’t knock the Ranger games either, they were fun adventures.
Sw/Sh were a real low point. They boiled the story down to “Let the adults handle it” and left you just running between gyms the entire game.
It’s honestly been too long since I’ve played the older games to judge their writing… but I did play Scarlet recently, and have to give props to Arven’s storyline. It is a shame the game is at Resident Evil 6 levels of unfocused, and brain-dead levels of easy.
I set Scarlett to be in Chinese because I assumed the story would be as forgettable as Sw/Sh’s and I’d get some easy practice just mashing yes on dialogues, but lo and behold it looks like there’s actual choices and stuff? I’m surprised at a mainline Pokémon game actually needing you to be able to read, and I have no idea how to set the game back to English, so I haven’t played it much at all.
You cannot change a pokemon game’s language in the middle of a playthrough. You choose the language at the very beginning of the game. This is because a breeding pair of Pokemon with different language origins have a higher chance to breed with each other and produce eggs faster - I think the eggs may also have a higher chance to be shiny, but I’m less sure of that. Either way, it’s supposed to motivate you to trade online.
If you wanna change your language, you’re gonna have to wipe your save and start over.
masuda is the reason behind this, he said he was tired of pokemon so hes going to make half-assed game going foward, that is the reason i never got a switch.
Been playing Mario Kart DS for the first time. Did all of 50cc and just have a couple cups left on 100cc. I forgot these older entries tie unlockables to difficulty.
the lack of endgame content has been a problem for a while for pokemon game, it was only the battle tower at the end in most games. i did like the ultra moon of the various legendaries which can ben shiny you cant get easily in previous consoles.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne